1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to musical tone generation apparatuses that generate musical tones in response to desired tone colors. This invention also relates to extension boards which are installed in the musical tone generation apparatuses for expansion of tones colors and effects.
This application is based on Patent Application No. Hei 11-154785 filed in Japan, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, extension boards fabricating extended memories and devices are widely used and interconnected with main units of computer systems to enhance their functions or add new functions.
Similar to the computer systems, musical tone generation apparatuses such as sound source devices (or tone generators) and electronic musical instruments install tone color extension boards to enable generation of musical tones using extended tone colors, which differ from preset tone colors originally stored therein. Or, they install extended effect boards to add new effect functions.
Conventionally, the extension boards such as the tone color extension boards are designed to merely store new tone colors, which are selected for generation of musical tones in response to key-operation signals given from an external system or device.
Generally, the sound source devices do not install sequencer functions. Therefore, in order to generate a specific sound pattern such as an arpeggio (i.e., succession of notes) and a phrase (i.e., unit of melody sounds) in response to a new tone color being provided by the tone color extension board, it is necessary to provide a special device which is exclusively used for generation of sound patterns. For example, a sequencer is interconnected with the sound source device to enable generation of sound patterns. That is, the sequencer generates a key-depression signal designating generation of the sound pattern, which is input to the tone color extension board. Thus, the sound pattern is generated using the extended tone color of the tone color extension board.
As described above, the conventional musical tone generation apparatus installing the extension board suffers from problems due to incapability in direct execution of extended functions.